It's a bit odd to hear people complain that Yuna's inflated scores make her unbeatable when she's been beaten by a less than perfect Miki Ando (of all skaters). A mere triple Flip and a double-toe is the difference between her 128 points in 2011 Worlds and 148 points in 2013 Worlds. That's the real gap we're talking about.

Certainly not. There are always other factors at play. Maybe on paper, that's what it suggests, but it's never that simple.

Certainly not. There are always other factors at play. Maybe on paper, that's what it suggests, but it's never that simple.

Not sure what you mean? The difference technically was a mere triple flip and double toe-loop between those two performances. My point was, that 20-point gap between her 2011 FS score and 2013 FS score was certainly NOT two quads (base value of two quad toes). She only needed a clean skate and her PCS and GOE would have filled in the rest.

My other point was that other skaters can get the same boost. A clean triple Axel from Mao goes a long way towards boosting her GOE and PCS. And can you imagine how high Kostner's PCS would be if she had a clean Free?

A program and performance is a whole in any case, so even in the objective or ideal sense of CoP technical elements and program components and quality cannot be scored independently.

I agree with this. It's like you're getting blown away by a hurricane, clinging to the last spindly little palm tree of objectivity. By the time you get to the triple Salchow, all she has to do is not fall down and you've got to give her a +2. Your will is not your own.

Pretty consistent results despite the differences in rules and time frames. Notice how an extra triple and a clean performance goes a long way to boosting the scores? And I wouldn't say it's wrong either. I think it's quite right that cleanliness should count for a lot. Yuna gets a pretty steep 17 to 20 point penalty for missing just one triple in her program.

I am sure it has been said before but Yunas real strength is she has no weakness. Musically she is strong. Jumpwiseh she has wonderful flow and consistency. Spins are nice. She has a great personality that shows up on the ice. She is a complete skater that is her strength.

My other point was that other skaters can get the same boost. A clean triple Axel from Mao goes a long way towards boosting her GOE and PCS. And can you imagine how high Kostner's PCS would be if she had a clean Free?

In my opinion it is the consistency, especially on jumps, which is the most important and the speed, which helps her to get high GOE. Her programs are also well choreographed, even they are not out of this world in terms of choreography or originality.

Her 3-lutz-3-toe. If Yu Na couldn't pull off that 3-3 so beautifully time and time again, she would be in the mix of top skaters but would not be so far ahead of her rivals. The rest of her skating is good but her 3-3 is really her calling card in my opinion.

I am sure it has been said before but Yunas real strength is she has no weakness. Musically she is strong. Jumpwiseh she has wonderful flow and consistency. Spins are nice. She has a great personality that shows up on the ice. She is a complete skater that is her strength.

Also, Yu-Na rides the music. Recall her free program at the 2009 worlds when she skated to the music, Scheherazade . She was primed for a beautiful CLEAN skate but flubbed an easy double. Why? The music was beautiful and she was skating free and beautiful when all of a sudden the music took a dissonant turn and immediately you could see she was caught off guard. And that is my point; unlike a lot of other skaters I believe she relies on the music to inform her skating, to ride it like a surfer rides a wave, so much so that when the Scheherazade piece made an abrupt dissonant turn it caused her to to flub an easy jump. Her lapse of concentration was really a lapse of MUSICAL concentration. That is the downside. The upside....

I'm not generally the one to go to for any technical insights, but even I notice that YuNa's jumps cover a huge amount of ice--they have distance as well as height. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Of course it's not the only thing I value in her skating, but it's definitely one of the strongest factors in her success. Like Midori Ito, another phenomenon, YuNa is a woman ahead of her time in some ways.

What Rabid says makes sense (I won't presume to say that's exactly what happened to Yu-Na). Your mind goes different places in competition. When you are feeling really good about a performance and are "into" it and then a hard transition comes up, it can throw you off no matter how much you've practiced.

I think it was the placement of that triple salchow in the program which threw her off- it comes less than 4 seconds after that long spiral sequence, there is almost no setup to it. Her legs must've been burning and fatigued and she just missed it.

Another aspect of yuna's skating is her use of the rink- she uses every bit of it to get as much speed as she can. In order to get speed, she gets really close to the boards, carving a big turn on the ice. It almost looks like a racer's line, where you don't stay in the middle of the road to get speed, you actually lose speed that way. You need to often hug the very edge of the road in the turn to accelerate out of it into the straights. So the impression I get watching her is that she's covering a very big part of the rink very quickly (of course it helps her into her big jumps- the lutz and flip).